Relations

In this remarkable book, Jane Miller writes about the experience of being a daughter and a sister, about the intensities of family life and the illuminations that come from the last days of parents. Relations describes a record-keeping kinship and offers portraits of her parents' long marriage, its mysteries and incompatibilities, of her grandfather, the/i>

Overview

In this remarkable book, Jane Miller writes about the experience of being a daughter and a sister, about the intensities of family life and the illuminations that come from the last days of parents. Relations describes a record-keeping kinship and offers portraits of her parents' long marriage, its mysteries and incompatibilities, of her grandfather, the scientist Redcliffe Salaman, and of her great-aunt Clara Collet, one of the first women civil servants. It is a story in which Karl Marx and George Gissing have parts to play.

Here are the tensions of belonging and yet not belonging to an English middle-class at once hospitable to difference and internally divided. More than two hundred years of English history are present in these portraits, which show the dawning emancipation of women and the effects of empire on family life. It is the story of an evolution, of a move out of trade towards public service and the professions, and towards the dramas and family romance of recent times.

Editorial Reviews

EBOOK COMMENTARY

Miller's (education, emerita, London Univ.) previous works on the development of education for women (e.g., School for Women) and gender politics in writing (e.g., Women Writing About Men) in a sense pointed to this latest work, in which the author examines her family and her role in its framework. She provides a thorough, quiet consideration of an intellectual brood, a family whose members counted among its acquaintances Karl Marx and novelist George Gissing. Trailblazing feminist ancestors, parental incompatibility, Jewishness, and intellectual snobbishness are all covered here. Miller's detached tone at times gives the work the feel of a sociological study-it is as much an intricate investigation into the development of Miller's family and her own past as it is a personally organized work. As Miller is clearly more concerned with using personages to illustrate historical trends than with dishing familial dirt, this title will be well received by those favoring thought over exposition; academic libraries are encouraged to purchase and larger public libraries may wish to consider as well.-Audrey Snowden, Cleveland P.L. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Miller's (education, emerita, London Univ.) previous works on the development of education for women (e.g., School for Women) and gender politics in writing (e.g., Women Writing About Men) in a sense pointed to this latest work, in which the author examines her family and her role in its framework. She provides a thorough, quiet consideration of an intellectual brood, a family whose members counted among its acquaintances Karl Marx and novelist George Gissing. Trailblazing feminist ancestors, parental incompatibility, Jewishness, and intellectual snobbishness are all covered here. Miller's detached tone at times gives the work the feel of a sociological study-it is as much an intricate investigation into the development of Miller's family and her own past as it is a personally organized work. As Miller is clearly more concerned with using personages to illustrate historical trends than with dishing familial dirt, this title will be well received by those favoring thought over exposition; academic libraries are encouraged to purchase and larger public libraries may wish to consider as well.-Audrey Snowden, Cleveland P.L. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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Meet the Author

Jane Miller is Professor Emeritus, London University Institute of Education. She is the author of Many Voices, Women Writing About Men, Seductions, More Has Meant Women: The Feminisation of Schooling and School for Women.